I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for performing handoff in a wireless communication system.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication for multiple users by sharing the available system resources. Examples of such multiple-access systems include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) systems, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) systems, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) systems.
A wireless multiple-access communication system may include many sectors, where the term “sector” can refer to a base station and/or its coverage area, depending on the context in which the term is used. The sectors can support communication for terminals on the forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the terminals, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from the terminals to the base stations. On the forward link, a terminal may observe different channel conditions for different sectors and may thus receive transmissions from these sectors with different received signal qualities. On the reverse link, different sectors may observe different channel conditions for the terminal and may thus receive a transmission from the terminal with different received signal qualities. Improved performance and better resource utilization may be achieved by selecting appropriate sectors to serve the terminal on the forward and reverse links.
There is therefore a need in the art for techniques to select serving sectors for a terminal in a wireless communication system.